“I’ll love you until you break my heart. I’ll give you the broken pieces of my heart as an offering to you, because you own it. Whole, shattered, alive, or dead; you own my heart no matter what condition it’s in. I’ll stay with you until you figure out how to feel. I’ll stay with you even if you never do.”

This is a story about happiness, and how it doesn't simply happen because you fall in love.

Lennox is on the run from her ex-boyfriend. She had to drop everything, tell no one, and move to a new town, alone. She expected to be lonely, she expected to be afraid, but she never expected to meet a man named Vic who drove her crazy with lust and anger and called her "Lenny". If it’s at all possible, Vic is more twisted than the man she ran away from.

She should ignore him, but they’re drawn to each other like magnets. Lennox ran from Seattle to Santa Barbara to get away from violence, to create a new life, and to be something simple. Instead she’s found herself wrapped up in great friends and an epic love. This new life is the opposite of everything she wants, but it might just be everything she needs.

Excerpt

“Hee hee.”

I turned over in bed and put the pillow over my head. Whoever was playing in the hallways at—I glanced at my clock—two in the morning, needed a serious tongue-lashing. But I wasn’t going to give it to them. I was going to fall asleep, hopefully. It had been a long ass day. The night kept stretching on like rubber about to snap. I wanted sleep but it just wouldn’t come.

“One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, shut the door.”

I sat up, glaring at my door. The voices were getting closer. They were creepy and waif like. Like a child’s voice carried far from home through the fog. I hugged my knees, waiting for another installment of the rhyme.

“Five, six, pick up sticks.”

The children, if you could call them that, were definitely getting closer. If I was an angry, old woman (like I should be) I would have gone out and told them to quit it with the ruckus. Instead, I was a paranoid girl who curled up in her bed reliving the past.

“Seven, eight, lay them straight. Nine, ten, kill them again.”

My eyes shot wide open at the last verse. Had I heard that correctly? The creepy Stephen King children on the other side of my door had said “kill them again.”

“This isn’t happening,” I muttered to myself, over and over again, until it became a mantra. When I was younger, before the medication, all I had was myself. I had a song I would sing to myself until the sun came up and everything bad had gone away. I was older now, I was supposed to be over this shit. I’m a semi-functioning member of society, dammit.

I coiled every bit of courage I had inside me and stood off my bed. I was going to go investigate. The way to deal with these ghosts is to get rational. What’s the worst that could happen?

Death. Destruction. The words popped in to my head warrantlessly. That’s it though. I’m not afraid of death or inscrutable destruction. These ghosts in my head prey on fear. Fear is all they have. Terror.

Still, knowing all of that and rationalizing it as I did, I was scared as I opened the door. I opened the door and the hallway light assaulted me.

“Hee hee.”

I jumped back, looking for the children.

“One, two, buckle my shoe.”

What the hell? The voices were on a loop. I looked around for whoever was speaking. I stepped further in to the hall when my foot stepped on something hard and edgy. Beneath my bare sole was a black box. I lifted it up to examine it.

“Three, four…” A tape recorder. The box spoke once more before I smashed it against the wall.

This was too fucking much. Dean had placed a recording of a terrifying children outside of my door. A threat, no less. Dean knew my history with mental illness and was using it against me.

Cocksucker.

Brilliant, evil, cocksucker.

What kind of game was he playing? And how many lives did I have left?

Praise for the Book

"Mary Catherine Gebhard's romantic suspense novel, You Own Me, is sexy, exciting and very entertaining... It's really quite a marvelous romantic suspense novel, and I'll be looking for other works by this author. You Own Me is most highly recommended." ~ Readers Favorite

"There was laughter, tears (yes, there were real tears, not an allergic reaction), anger, and frustration! This story has a serious cocktail of feels. Mary Catherine Gebhard has done brilliantly for a debut novel. I definitely want to read more of her work." ~ Khulood

"The books main characters were great. We had Vic, Lenny, Dean and Zoe. All the characters were well thought of and I could picture them all. This book has quite a bit of domestic violence which you can find a bit distressing." ~ becky

"I really liked this book. I liked it so much that I stayed up reading til 2 am the night I started it. The characters were great. I liked the plot. I do hope that there will be another book because the ending felt unfinished to me. I also thought that there could have been a smoother transition between the different sections of the chapters. That being said, I did enjoy the book and I would read more by this author." ~ Shannon

About the Author

Mary Catherine Gebhard bites off more than she can chew and sometimes calls herself Eva Natsumi. She's lived in Salt Lake City, Utah her entire life, but occasionally goes on vacation from reality. Don’t worry, she sends postcards.

Giveaway

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